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| Edited By: Promit Mukherjee |Source: DNA |Updated: Mar 18, 2018, 02:22 AM IST
Orissa Mining Corporation (OMC) will file a fresh writ in the Supreme Court against the Ministry of Environment of Forests (MoEF) against the ban on mining in Niyamgiri hills.
The state-owned company had filed an interlocutory application challenging the MoEF decision in early February, almost six months after the MoEF order was served. Later, it also appealed to the apex court to take up the case for speedy hearing.
In its first hearing of the case on Friday, the Supreme Court asked OMC to either file a fresh writ or file it as a contempt of court by the MoEF since the matter was already disposed of by the apex court earlier.
According to sources, OMC urged that MoEF’s rejection of stage-II forest clearance to the company for mining of bauxite in Niyamgiri hills was in violation of the Supreme Court judgments given in 2007 and 2008. All the issues on which the ministry had rejected the proposal had already been observed in the Supreme Court during the 21 hearings held over three years.
It was also argued that Anil Agarwal-controlled Vedanta Group’s upcoming alumina refinery in Lanjigarh, whose expasion was also halted by the MoEF, was not related to the ban on mining in Niyamgiri.
“OMC argued that they were different issues and the alumina refinery case is separately being fought in Orissa High Court by the company and has nothing to do with OMC,” said a source.
After listening to both sides on Friday, Justice Ravindran and Justice AK Patnaik asked OMC to file a fresh writ as a violation of the fundamental rights of an organisation under Article 32 of the Constitution, the source said.
“OMC will be filing a fresh writ as directed early next week and it is likely to come up for hearing in the next week,” the source added.
The MoEF in August 2010, after accepting the recommendations of the four-member Forest Advisory Committee headed by N C Saxena, stopped mining in Niyamgiri Hills and the expansion of Vedanta’s one million tonne alumina refinery, citing that mining would severely impact the ecology of the hills.
The mining contractor for the Niyamgiri project was a joint venture company with Sterlite Industries, a listed-subsidiary of Vedanta Group, holding 74% stake and OMC having the rest. The bauxite to be mined was to be fed to Vedanta’s Lanjigarh refinery.
